ALLIED PRISONERS OF WAR AT KALLANG [Allocated Title]

description

Object description

Allied prisoners of war, liberated from Japanese captivity, are seen at Kallang airfield, Singapore.

Full description

Lieutenant-General Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart, distinctive by his eyepatch and amputated left arm, steps down from an aeroplane and inspects a guard of honour. He speaks with a liberated prisoner of war (POW). POWs gather around a jeep; though ubiquitous by 1945, many of these men had not seen one until they were liberated. A parked Douglas Dakota transport aircraft with a figure of Pegasus on the nose. POWs around an ambulance. A convoy of ambulances passes along a road. View from the Cathay Building over rooftops towards Kallang sea port; aircraft passing overhead (one of them an RAF De Havilland Mosquito) and many ships moored in the harbour. Japanese soldiers, now themselves prisoners of war, filling in trenches in the grounds of an ecclesiastical building, possibly a cathedral. An RAF officer demonstrates a covert radio set hidden in a water bottle.

Over two million American servicemen passed through Britain during the Second World War. In 1944, at the height of activity, up to half a million were based there with the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF). Their job was to man and maintain the vast fleets of aircraft needed to attack German cities and industry.